Taxing Middle and
Lower Income Families to Enrich Attorneys
The U.S. Senate passed an amendment as
part of Senator John McCain's National Tobacco Policy and Youth Smoking Reduction Act
to pay attorneys as much as $4,000 per hour for their work in bringing lawsuits
against tobacco companies.
That's right ... you read right! $4,000
an hour!
Provisions of the proposed tax legislation allows families
to be taxed in order to pay plaintiffs attorney's as much as $4,000 an hour to
pursue tobacco related lawsuits. The amendment to the tobacco bill limits
attorney's fees in a declining scale that ranges from $4,000 an hour for action
before 12/31/94, to $500 an hour for the most recent action.
Rather
than spending huge amounts of money on children's health or health in general,
the way has been cleared for a small group of trial lawyers to be enriched with
massive fees charged through
tobacco
related litigation.
This National Lawyer Enrichment deal will not make attorneys instant millionaires. . . . Some of them will become BILLIONAIRES!
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) defended trial lawyers ability to collect
these huge fees, calling them the "last bastion of freedom."
Republicans sought to ease this massive enrichment of attorneys by
limiting them to only $1,000 an hour! Yep, that's right, $1,000 an hour! While
that may be a whole lot less than $4,000/hr., it's still a whole lot more than
most people earn in a week.
Apparently, Congress agrees that lawyers
should earn these ridiculous fees. Senators voted down an amendment proposed by
Sen. Lauch Faircloth (R-N.C.) which proposed to cap the fees of trial lawyers
involved in tobacco litigation to $250 per hour. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)
called the cap "more than a fair wage." Without a limit, he said, the Senate
could help to create "an exclusive club of trial lawyer billionaires."
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Following the defeat in Congress of Sen. John McCain's National
Tobacco Policy and Youth Smoking Reduction Act (S. 1415), 46 state attorneys
general led by Eliot Spitzer and major tobacco manufacturers sat down and
ironed out the
Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), based on the same plan
that had already been rejected by Congress. It was in effect, a new national
sales tax on cigarettes, the cost estimated at $240 billion over the first 25
years.
Private lawyers representing 40 states in their suits against the
tobacco industry stand to get more than $14.7 billion over 25 years. Four
national firms - based in Seattle, Mississippi and South Carolina - stand to
reap the most. Together, these firms represent two dozen of the states and
could reap the lion's share of $10 billion in fees from those states.
What each lawyer is paid has been kept private, in accordance with the
1998 Master Settlement Agreement. Only the total amount awarded lawyers by each
state were made public.
What the Master Settlement Agreement
essentially created was a national government/tobacco cartel that harmed both
consumers and small businesses by increasing cigarette prices and restricting
competition. It was a backroom deal between state governments and big tobacco
companies.
State attorneys general came out winners as they expanded
their own power. Trial lawyers associated with the state lawsuits were also BIG
winners.
Analyses by a watchdog group show that some lawyers were paid
more than $15,000 per hour. Individual firms that originated the lawsuits and
were subsequently used by many states, reportedly will reap as much as $3
billion. Private attorneys in Texas, Mississippi and Florida made out like
bandits, fleecing tobacco companies, smokers and taxpayers for $8.2 billion in
legal fees -- billions more than the lawyers themselves had demanded!
What About Families
and Children?
The losers in the Master Settlement Agreement were the
taxpayers and small businesses. The direct financial burden (higher cigarette
prices) went to smokers, many of them low-wage earners. Small tobacco companies
were encumbered with annual escrow payments designed to “level the playing
field,” followed in subsequent years by a growing list of onerous
mandates.
Sadly, many Republicans who were elected with the mandate of
no new taxes has joined the effort to steal more of your money. They have been
forced to by the successful PR campaign slogan,
"Big Tobacco or
Kids?" Never mind truth! Liberals would have you believe that anyone
opposing their efforts of the government takeover of another American industry
and their welfare state caring for your children is necessarily supporting
youth smoking. How ridiculous, but effective.
``Republicans and all right-thinking American strongly agree with the president's concerns about children and smoking. Republicans hold a zero tolerance policy when it comes to the underage sales of tobacco to America's kids. What we see time and again from the Clinton-Gore Administration, however, is a get-rich-quick scheme for trial lawyers that leave children behind. Trial Lawyers are making untold tens of millions of dollars a lawsuit while not focusing on a single aspect of helping our children fight the temptation to begin smoking. It's no wonder trial lawyers have been rewarded so generously by this administration. Al Gore has received more money from trial lawyers than any other candidate running for president in American history -- almost $650,000 last week alone. Mr. President, let's put children first and not fat-cat trial lawyers money-grubbing for Al Gore's presidential campaign.'' - Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson
Prosecution for
profit.
The vulture mentality of trial lawyers can now use the court
system as a legal playground for the purpose of extortion of funds from
targeted defendants. Today it is tobacco, tomorrow will be a different target,
take your choice. They will use the billions of dollars they get from a tobacco
bill to file suits against other industries creating a nightmare in our legal
system. That's their track record and that's their plan.
Already, we
have seen utility companies, financial institutions and pharmaceutical
companies the target of multi-state lawsuits to extort more money from
legitimate businesses.
It wasn't that long ago that lawyer greed was
behind forcing Dow Corning into bankruptcy by thousands of unfounded plaintiff
claims that Dow´s silicone breast implants caused health problems. The
company acquiesced, and settled the billion dollar claims against it. Later, an
independent panel of 13 scientists concluded that silicone breast implants do
not cause any major diseases. The study, conducted by the Institute of Medicine
at the request of Congress, is only the latest in a series of research studies
concluding that there is no scientific evidence to support the breast implant
lawsuits.
